1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of Electronic Mail Management Systems. Specifically, this invention is a new and useful method, apparatus and computer program product for managing electronic mail (e-mail) messages forwarded from distribution lists (distribution lists are often termed mailing lists).
2. Background
Electronic mail provides a quick and convenient way for computer users to communicate. This communication is initiated by a message sender who composes the message using a text editing program, provides the e-mail address of the intended recipient, and often provides an indication of the content (subject matter) of the message by providing text in a "subject" field. Using well-understood technology this composed message is then sent to the recipient's computer address. The recipient's computer receives the message and stores it in the recipient's inbox. The recipient eventually reads, deletes, responds to, or otherwise processes the message stored within the inbox by using any of a number of e-mail programs well known in the art.
Because these messages travel across networks, they generally are constructed according to the Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages specification (RFC822). This specification can be found on the world wide web of the Internet at address "http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc822.html". Messages formatted to the RFC822 standard have a header portion and an optional body portion that contains the text of the message. The header portion includes a number of fields that address and classify the message. Although the embodiment described herein uses the RFC822 protocol, the invention does not require the RFC822 standard.
The header portion of a message contains fields composed of character strings comprising a field-name followed by a colon, followed by a field-body terminated by a carriage return/line feed. An example header field is: EQU "To: John Doe&lt;CR&gt;&lt;LF&gt;".
In this example, the &lt;CR&gt; represents the ASCII carriage return character and the &lt;LF&gt; represents the ASCII line feed character. The header field-names are not case sensitive, thus, "to:" is equivalent to "TO:", "To:" or "tO:".
The contents of these headers are specified by the entity who composes the message.
The "To:" field-body contains the addresses of the primary recipients of the message where the address of each recipient is separated by a comma. Recipients include both humans and programs. The "Subject:" field-body often provides a summary, or indicates the nature, of the message and sometimes contains a specialized command string that is to be recognized by the recipient. Although these fields are all initialized by the sender, the recipient fields are generally limited to actual Internet addresses. On the other hand, the subject field has no specific meaning and may, in fact, be blank, contain a specialized command string or contain a random arrangement of characters.
A sender can address a single message to many recipients by separating the addresses of the recipients with a comma. Each of these recipients may respond to the original message by sending a reply message to the same list of recipients (plus the original sender). Some of these recipients may then respond to the first reply message. These reply messages are termed follow-up messages to the original message. This process facilitates a vigorous discussion between the original sender and the recipients, as well as between the recipients.
An example of application programs that are recipients of electronic mail are list server (listserver) applications. A listserver application (when executing on an appropriate computer) receives mail addressed to the e-mail address of the distribution list (mailing list) serviced by the listserver, and forwards (redistributes) that received mail to the subscribers of the distribution list. A distribution list is generally directed towards a particular subject matter (e.g., the copyright list "cni-copyright@cni.org"). The listserver application also services commands contained in messages sent directly to the e-mail address of the listserver application (as compared to messages sent to the e-mail address of the distribution list served by the listserver application). Listserver applications generally recognize "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" command messages. Those interested in the subject matter of the distribution list send a "subscribe" command message to the listserver controlling the distribution list. The listserver maintains a recipient database that comprises the e-mail address of each recipient. The listserver forwards every e-mail message sent to the e-mail address of the distribution list to the e-mail address of every recipient in the recipient database. A recipient sends an "unsubscribe" command message to the listserver to remove the recipient's e-mail address from the recipient database and thus stop the listserver from forwarding, to the recipient, messages addressed to the distribution list.
Distribution lists can be managed directly by some human agency, a listserver application, or a combination of both. Some distribution lists are moderated in the sense that a human reviews all incoming messages prior to forwarding them to the distribution list subscribers. Other distribution lists are not moderated. Thus, messages received by the unmoderated group are automatically forwarded to the rest of the subscribers without human review.
The "majordomo" and "listserv" applications are two of the more popular listserver applications. The listserv application is described in the LISTSERV User Guide, 1993, ISBN 2-910286-02-9, .COPYRGT.1993 by EARN Association. This document is available on the Internet at "ftp://ftp.msstate.edu/docs/words-l/Net-Stuff/listserv.guide". The majordomo application is described in a chapter of Managing Internet Information Services, by Jerry Peek, .COPYRGT.1994 by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., ISBN 1-56592-062-7.
One of the problems with the use of distribution lists is that they generate a large number of e-mail messages. Unless these messages are read on a daily basis, they accumulate in the recipient's inbox resulting in a backlog of e-mail messages. The time required to read and evaluate this backlog often becomes an annoyance for busy people. Another problem is that e-mail messages from a distribution list are generally sent to the recipient's primary e-mail address. Thus, the backlog of distribution list messages are intermixed with the recipient's normal business and personal mail thereby obscuring e-mail that may be of more immediate relevance to the recipient than e-mail forwarded from the distribution list.
An example of when a recipient's e-mail becomes backlogged is when the recipient is traveling and does not have access, or time, to process e-mail messages. Another cause of e-mail backlog is when the recipient is under a deadline or some other circumstance where the recipient does not have time to deal with the distractions of considering non-critical e-mail. In both these examples, the recipient could unsubscribe from the distribution list during the duration of the event causing the e-mail backlog and then subscribe again after the event ends. However, often (especially in the above circumstances) the recipient will forget the name of the unsubscribed list and will be required to spend an inordinate amount of time to gather the information required to resubscribe to the distribution list.
Another approach to this problem is partially addressed in the prior art by creating recipient modifiable "filters" that ignore e-mail messages forwarded from a distribution list. These filters examine each e-mail message for some condition. If the filter detects that condition in the e-mail message, the filter performs an operation on that e-mail message. These filter operations generally include a delete operation. Thus, e-mail messages forwarded from a particular list can be deleted without intervention by the recipient. However, e-mail messages that have already been stored in the recipient's inbox are generally not accessible to a filter. Thus, the recipient's unread e-mail messages stored in the recipient's inbox will not be removed by most filters. Further, even those filters that can remove e-mail messages from the recipient's inbox require the recipient to execute some additional command to do so. Also, filters are notoriously difficult for non-programmers to use and often require significant debugging. Finally, at some later date the recipient must remember to deactivate the filter to, once again, receive e-mail messages forwarded from the distribution list.
Another problem associated with distribution lists is that recipient often forgets which listserver manages each of the distribution lists subscribed to by the recipient. Many busy people will forget the lists they subscribed to, which listserver supports each list, and how to subscribe to, and unsubscribe from, each list.
For these reasons, among others, recipients of e-mail from distribution lists need a tool to manage their subscribed distribution lists. The invention addresses these problems and simplifies a recipient's use of distribution lists by providing mechanisms for keeping track of distribution lists and for suspending, for a specified duration, e-mail forwarded from distribution lists.